wishlist

Need Ideas? Want to work on something SBTCVM's community could use? check these lists!

Utilities/Other:

    • adding syntax highlighting & similar support to your favorite IDE, for XAS script, SBTCVM assembly, and SSTNPL can definitely help out fellow developers. 
      •  you can find official specifications for IDE integration of SSTNPL and SBTCVM Assembly, here.

    • creating/porting/adapting Programming Languages (both interpreted & compiled)
      • adapted languages will likely need major changes for anything relying on hexadecimal and binary.
      • Generally, languages that aren't too advanced, but also don't touch binary/hexadecimal, will likely be easiest to port.
      • you may likely need to write a new compiler for some exiting languages. 
      • cross-compilers are welcome, even after the disk system is operational, as the VM itself is VERY SLOW. i.e. SSTNPL uses a cross-compiler written in python.
      • Ideally, target SBTCVM assembly, rather than the ISA itself.
    Specific TROM apps wanted:

      • Ternary adaptation of BASIC. (with line editor)
        • Try to keep commands common in 8bit micros more-or-less identical
        • Its expected that some compromises are likely to be needed.
      A general list of wanted TROM apps.

      • interesting games. Especially if they are more ambitious than the bundled games. some general ideas:
        • action-based plotter games 'oncoming trains' [ontrain] in 'apps' is a good example.
        • games that use the mouse
        • shorter text adventures might be doable. though longer ones will likely need the yet-unfinished SBTVDI disk system. 
        • a simple point and click adventure game is possible in theory. As both the TTY and plotter modes support the mouse (in the pygame frontend) 
        • games with sound and music
      • varying sorts of calculators (see clicalc for a working example)
      • interpreted languages are definitely welcome if your feeling brave enough to try! Certain esoteric languages might be a good starting point.
      • Shells (both command-based and graphical) are welcome. See 'sbtgsh' in 'apps' and 'shelldemo' in 'demos' for examples of both. you might also try the vector plotter mode.
      • A few 'demoscene-style' demos using the plotter and music via the sound chip. what can you do with a puny 6.5Khz CPU? (see 'ternarydreams' in 'demos' for an actual example.)

      Compilers & Tools:
      • Some sort of functional/block-based language.
      • Text screen editing tools (that can generate tas0 files for easy build integration.)
        • Should properly support both 3 color and 27 color packed-art, and text colors. 
        • aids for using the SBTCVM mouse are welcome.
      • vector editing tools (for plotter)
        • aids for using the SBTCVM mouse are welcome.
      • Music Tracker for the 'SBTCVM SIMPLE MUSIC ENGINE' (musicengine) music playback SSTNPL module. see 'musicdemo' in 'demos' for an example.


      'Optimistic' Ideas:
      Possibly a touch too optimistic?
      • An IDE built especially for SBTCVM?





      1 comment:

      1. SkepticusApril 5, 2026 at 6:50 AM

        Subject: New contributor — documentation, web, and a ternary OOP prototype

        Hi Thomas and team,
        I'm Stevo, a designer and prototype developer from Adelaide, Australia. I got SBTCVM running on my Linux Mint box yesterday and spent the morning playing the maze in curses and poking around the DOS shell. Haven't had that buzz since my first CLI machines decades ago. Brilliant project.

        I'd like to get involved. My background is design, documentation, and system architecture. I use AI-assisted development — Claude for implementation support and as a tutor while I learn SBTCVM's assembly language and ISA from the ground up. I'm not just generating code blindly, I'm using AI to accelerate genuine learning of the machine.

        Immediate contributions:
        The web presence and documentation look like they could use some love. Good docs are a force multiplier for a project like this, especially one that deserves wider attention. I'd like to start there — improving help files, making the onboarding smoother for newcomers, and giving the web side some attention if that's welcome.

        Longer term — TernOO:
        I have a concept I'm calling TernOO — hardware-native object-oriented primitives for balanced ternary. The idea: use the first trit of a 9-trit tryte as a type tag. Zero = data, positive = reference, negative = executable. The machine intrinsically knows what kind of thing each tryte contains, enabling object dispatch through a single three-way CMP rather than software-level type tables and vtable lookups.

        I'll be forking the repo to sandbox this — learning the codebase, experimenting with modifications, and testing the concept in my own space. If it proves out, I'd much rather bring it back to the main project than develop in isolation.

        Wanted to introduce myself and my intentions rather than just fork silently. Would love to hear your thoughts if you're active, and happy to pitch in wherever help is needed regardless.
        Cheers,
        Stevo
        Adelaide, South Australia

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